We’re super excited chat with Portland based multimedia artist, painter, animator, designer, illustrator and educator Lori D. Her imaginative and colorful paintings, films, and various works have appeared in – Thrasher, SLAP, Skateboard Canada Magazine – and as board graphics for Toy Machine and Girl. We’re stoked to find out more about her artistic journey from drawing on paper placemats to creating her own animations (using painted cels); how a herd of wild and wonderful Canadians on 1970’s Hondas helped inspire a zine; and what she’s got coming up for the rest of the year. This is a good one folks, so MAKE THE LEAP!!
Photographs courtesy of the artist.
Hi Lori! Could you briefly tell us about yourself?
Hello! My name is Lori D. I live in Portland, Oregon where I work as an animator, illustrator, designer, muralist, and educator. I am currently enjoying learning more yarn arts as well as attending miniature horse shows every chance I get.
When did you first find yourself drawn to art and making cool stuff with your own hands? Who and what were your early influences?
I have always loved to draw and tell stories. When my brother and I were kids, my dad used to give us drawing challenges to draw on the paper placemats while we were waiting for our food at restaurants. He would say things like, “Draw a shark attack”, “Draw a dog serving tea to a snake.” Another major motivating force happened when I was a kid I was riding in the back seat of my Mom’s car, and I overheard a conversation between her and her cousin.
She was talking about this skateboarder boy who was friends with her daughter and was always making things for his friends as gifts, like lamps and art and mixtapes and stuff. I was enchanted by this idea of making art with the intention of giving it as a gift. In my young brain, I thought that in order to be this kind of person, you also needed to be a skateboarder.
Skateboarding, creativity, and generosity became linked in my mind, and I decided I wanted to be that kind of person too. The weirdest thing about this story is I later figured out who that skateboarder boy was and it was Johannes Gamble who went on to work with Girl Skateboards and now is basically a video / animation sorcerer at large as far as I know. Without even knowing anything about his life path, I basically ended up following his footsteps for 15 years before I even knew his name. Another early influence was the 80’s TV show Solid Gold. Top 2 early influences: Johannes Gamble & the Solid Gold dancers. Hahaha. That’s true though.
There’s always been a connection with skateboarding and art in your earlier work, which would lead you to do a bunch of stuff with various skate magazines like Thrasher andTransworld. How did that relationship start for you and tell us a little about the Villa Villa Cola collective you were a part of?
I didn’t start skating until I was 16. I had never seen a woman or girl ride a skateboard. I used to go to the donut shop where our town’s finest red curb was and watch all of my friends skateboard. One day one of my friends pushed his board over to me and said “Why don’t you try it?” I thought he was crazy. It sounds impossible but it had never occurred to me that I might be able to learn how to ride a skateboard. This was a million years ago. It’s hard to imagine thinking that way now. There were women and girls skating them but I never saw them represented on TV or in the magazines I could get at the local grocery store. Those were my only windows to the outside world from the small town I grew up in.
My best friend Jami and I decided to learn to skate together but still rarely saw any other girls skating. When I moved to San Diego to go to college I met these identical twins, Tiffany and Nicole Morgan who were making a skate zine called Villa Villa Cola (named after Pippi Longstocking’s house). It was a zine that was focused on representing female skateboarders but it was super low key about it and wasn’t only about female skateboarding.
We were painfully aware that there wasn’t much representation of females in the mainstream skateboarding media and wanted to document the amazing female skateboarders that we were meeting. This was in the late nineties of the 1900’s (hahaha) so you couldn’t really find out what was going on elsewhere on the internet because the internet was still really limited back then. I was studying film/video at UCSD and started working with Tiffany and Nicole on making videos, film, and art for the zines. We met Faye Jaime & Van Nguyen right around then and became inseparable. We had a solid VVC crew and travelled all over the country together skating and meeting more and more skateboarders, sharing our zines and videos.
Skateboarding has been such a powerfully positive force in my life and has helped me get stronger, trust myself, and it has introduced me to the greatest humans and experiences. Pretty much all of my art jobs, even to this day, have come my way because of friends I met skateboarding.
We had a short lived VVC column in Transworld Magazine thanks to Scott Pommier who was working there at the time. I also did stuff for Thrasher, SLAP, Skateboard Canada Magazine, and eventually Kevin Wilkins gave me a column in The Skateboard Mag. That monthly column ran for quite a while, maybe 6 years? I later was thrilled by the chance to do a board series for Toy Machine thanks to Ed Templeton, and a board series for Girl thanks to Andy Jenkins. Around 2004 Villa Villa Cola made a skateboard video with Lisa Whitaker (Meow Skateboards) that was sponsored by Element and distributed by 411 Video Magazine called “Getting Nowhere Faster.” You can find it online. We toured the west coast with that video holding events that included cakewalks, skate demos, bands, screen printing stations, breakdancing performances, art shows and dance parties alongside the video premieres. It was so fun.
What’s the inspiration behind some of your paintings and portraits? What’s that artistic process like and how is it different from when you’re working on let’s say animation and film?
Human beings are my greatest inspiration. I just love people watching. I love how hard we are all trying to do our best at life. I try to celebrate that in my paintings and honor our vulnerabilities. I love painting the gap between intention and reality. I am also especially amused by some aspects of American culture and take great pleasure in representing that stuff too. I think with painting, I approach it more like a call and response kind of activity.
The call is the idea I sit down with, but then there is usually another facet of the image that doesn’t get revealed until I’ve already begun… there is usually a second idea that will show up while I’m painting and watching the image emerge. With animation, I usually have a pretty clear idea worked out before I start animating, but even then, I try to leave room in the process to freestyle a little bit whenever possible. Animation usually takes more planning; at least the way I’ve been doing it so far.
When did you start getting into animation and what about it did you fall in love with? Was there something that wasn’t like painting and illustration that drew you to it?
I had been making films for a while before I realized you could DRAW A FILM! That is what got me really pumped. That you could make a whole film by yourself and that it could look like anything and be about anything and you didn’t have to depend on renting fancy equipment or rounding up a bunch of people to help. I taught myself how to do cel animation (hand painted on celluloid) and shot it on 16mm film.
I didn’t know you could or should test animation as you were going along so I made all of the frames over 6 months or so, shot it on film, drove it from San Diego to Burbank, slept in my 89’ Camaro in the parking lot of the film lab overnight while it got developed, and then drove it back to San Diego to run it through a film projector before I even knew what it looked like! It turned out very weird, but in kind of a good way. I think I was really just excited about learning how to animate as another way of telling stories. You can move anything, even just a dot or a line and we can’t take our eyes off of it. It’s powerful magic.
Art can be very up and down. Things can be super busy then suddenly not so busy. What’s been some of your biggest challenges art and career wise, and how have you learned to overcome them?
This can be really hard. It is so fun to have your own business as an art maker because you never know what kind of project will be coming along next and you have a choice over what kind of projects you take on. There is so much variety in the kinds of projects I have had the privilege of working on and every new job teaches me something. The same mystery that makes each new opportunity an exciting surprise, is also the downfall of this style of employment. I end up working most of the time because I don’t know when the next job will be coming or what it will be.
Luckily I love working! I also teach part time which is great not only because it offers a regular pay check but even more so because it gets me out of my solitary studio mode, and I get to work with lots of other artists as students. I get super energized by seeing what they are making.
Also, I have recently taken some business classes which sounds so boring, but is actually very exciting because I am getting pro tips about better ways of taking care of biz. I think if you can expect that there will be non-busy times and make choices based on that understanding about what kinds of jobs to take and how much you need to save to get you through those times, that can be super helpful. That all makes sense and sounds pretty straight forward, but it’s harder to put it into practice. I think the biggest take-away from the business classes is that if you want to have more control over your circumstances, you have to make a plan instead of just crossing your fingers and hoping that everything is going to work out (the latter was my sole strategy up until recently).
How do you keep yourself motivated and what do you do when you’re not creating stuff?
My tendency is to work every day all day. Sometimes I burn out and I don’t even realize it. I think forcing myself to get out of the studio is one of the best ways for me to come up with a bunch of new ideas. Going out and experiencing something, whether it’s hanging out with someone I haven’t seen in a while or going to a new place, just getting out of my head and looking and listening is always the best.
How did you get into motorcycle riding and how did it end up inspiring you to create The Orcas zine?
My Dad always rode motorcycles so I was around them all of the time growing up, but I didn’t get my own motorcycle until after I had befriended a herd of wild and wonderful Canadians who were all riding 1970’s Hondas. That inspired me to get a bike so I could go on skate / camping trips with them. The Orcas zine is about my first trip on that bike. It was both terrifying and exhilarating, kind of like skateboarding. I’ve been riding motorcycles for 16 years now I think, and I hope I will be able to ride for many more decades.
Okay we’re going back indoors for a sec, if we were to check out your creative space or studio, what would we find and what’s on your walls?
On the walls: a treasured photo by one of my favorite photographers and skate friend Corey Arnold; a painting of my Dad competing in motorcycle trials by my old friend Brent Wick; Leif Goldberg screenprinted calendar; paper flower garlands sent to me by artist Jodie Mack (maybe from India?); a $1 painting my boyfriend bought for me at an estate sale in Idaho of two ladies walking down the beach together arm in arm; a print from the animation Hedgehog in the Fog made by Russian animator Yuri Norstein and his wife Francheska Yarbusova; an embroidery piece by my Great Grandmother; a signed photo of Louie Anderson dressed as Christine Baskets holding a framed portrait I painted for him of Christine Baskets; some “business cards” from animation legend Bruce Bickford that have a tiny clay puppet embedded into them from his claymations.
Who are some artists new and old that constantly amaze and inspire you?
Lilli Carré
Amy Lockhart
Takeshi Murata
Ralph Pugay
Carson Ellis
Vanessa Davis
Kirsten Lepore
Sally Cruikshank
Zach Erickson
Thom Lessner
Lynda Barry
Allison Schulnik
Tara Booth
Jodie Mack
Edie Fake
Nathaniel Russell
Jennifer Levonian
Sean Christensen
Mark De Long
Stefan Gruber
Leif Goldberg
Alake Shilling
Kathleen Lolley
Souther Salazar
Mel Kadel
Woodrow White
Keith Jones
Grandma Moses
Dynasty Handbag
Jim Houser
Ellen Lesperance
Vanessa Renwick
And soooo many more!!!
What’s the best advice and the worst advice you’ve gotten?
O dang. This is a really good question. I don’t know! Ahhh. I think the best advice was to just do the kind of work you want to do, not what you think people want you to do. To basically stay true to yourself in your creative adventures. I think it was also good advice to accept where you are and not to be afraid to share what you are making right now, even though you might wish your skillz were further along. If nobody knows what kind of art you make, they won’t think to invite you to be in shows, or work on projects and stuff. If you keep waiting until it’s good enough, so many opportunities might pass you by.
The worst advice, I don’t know… I think it’s weird that nobody talks about the toll that making art or animation can have on your body. Too much sitting and eye strain. I wish information about how to take better care of ourselves as artists was easier to come by and common knowledge. Luckily I met this rad woman, Dr. Montserrat Andreys, at jury duty and was talking with her about this and she is a dancer and was also feeling there was a need for this. She recently started a new project called HEART – Healthcare for Artists. She’s posting lots of informative FREE videos on Facebook now so I’m very excited about that and grateful for her generosity making that information more accessible free of charge.
Currently you are teaching the Animated Arts Program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Can you tell us a little bit about your role and what it has been like to teach this program? What’s been the most rewarding thing for you to see as a teacher?
Yes! I teach Beginning Animated Arts and a new class called Character & Identity. I have also taught a Time Arts class and a Non-Static Image workshop. I love teaching at PNCA. The best part is meeting and working with lots of different people with different experiences and ideas. I think people don’t realize how much teaching involves constantly learning. Being able to learn from and on behalf of others and to be in a position to try and support them and their own goals is the best part of teaching.
Tell us about your traveling experimental animation project called Time Farmers. How did it all come about? And what’s been the response!
I got an MFA in Experimental Animation at CalArts and it took me forever to finish my thesis film Lord I: The Records Keeper. When I finally finished it, I wanted to share it, but I thought it would be a lot more fun to also share films by some of my favorite independent animators at the same time. These non-commercial personal films are sometimes hard to come by for a general audience and I was excited to offer them up to a variety of audiences.
I originally wanted to do a long film tour on my motorcycle and I still hope to do that someday, but I didn’t have a big enough block of open time to pull it off so I just planned several screenings in various locations and travelled to them one at a time. The venues ranged from a bunch of office chairs lined up in the desert at Art Queen in Joshua tree, to a dance studio in Seattle, WA, to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philly, to projecting it on the side of an RV in a park in Calgary Alberta in association with Truck Gallery and the Quickdraw Animation Society.
The response was great! We had so many people come out to these screenings who often hadn’t seen this type of animation before and they were really engaged and had a lot to say about the films. I am working on expanding Time Farmers in new and exciting ways but don’t want to say more about that yet.
Since this is called Sketchy Behavior, what is your sketchiest or weirdest art story you’d like to share with folks?
When I was first starting out making art, I just really wanted it to share it with other people and I was really excited about the idea of connecting with strangers by making them art. All probably leading back to Johannes Gamble. I used to live in an apartment on the second floor in downtown San Diego with the VVC ladies.
I started an experiment of throwing paintings out of the second story window onto the street below in front of strangers and then hiding. I was trying to give the painting to them this way, but of course they just lunged out of the way, threw an angry glance up at the window and then walked off. Getting something thrown at you out of the second story window by an unseen person is not a traditional way to receive a gift.
I needed a new strategy. I started leaning paintings up against walls at construction sites, hanging them from tree limbs in parks, and sticking them under people’s windshield wipers. I don’t know if anybody ever kept them or not but it was fun anyway.
Later I got really into sending people handmade stuff in the mail. I was living in a trailer park in Canyon Country, CA and a tornado had just hit a trailer park in Oklahoma, so I thought of the idea to make a tornado piñata so you could beat the hell out of the tornado and get some kind of catharsis.
The skate video Man Down had just come out, and I loved Louie Barletta’s part and I really wanted to send him some mail to tell him so. I thought based on his video part that he could probably deal with the weirdness of receiving a handmade tornado piñata in the mail from a total stranger without getting too freaked out. I created a miniature trailer park out of cardboard and filled the piñata with that, and farm animals, and candy, and metallic wigs and stuff. I put it in a giant box along with a letter expressing my admiration of his skateboarding maneuvers and drew all over the outside of the box. I sent it off to him thinking that even if I never heard back, It was an interesting experiment to make a tornado piñata.
Months passed, maybe 2 or 3 months. One day I got a small package in the mail with his name on the return address. When I opened it up there was a scarf in there with a note that said something like, “Thanks for the tornado. I knitted you this scarf, but I don’t really know how to knit so I hope it doesn’t fall apart.” SUCCESS! The scarf did not fall apart for the record.
We gotta know! What are your favorite Vans?
I always think every new pair of Vans I get are my favorite and the ones I bought most recently are for sure my favorite! They are SK8-Hi Pro Ultracush black/gum.
They are super comfortable but still feel good to skate in and I can wear them all day every day.
Anything that you’d like to mention coming up for the rest of the year? Where’s your next adventure?
I have a few really exciting projects that will be revealed within the next year but I am not supposed to talk about them yet. I got a grant from Oregon’s Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC) to work on a graphic novel about my family’s farming history and the year I spent living on the family pistachio farm with my hilarious Grandma after my Grandpa passed away. My next adventure is hopefully going to take me to New Mexico soon. Also fingers crossed for some motorcycle trips this summer!
Time Farmers: A Collection of Experimental Animation
Get yer tickets, y'all. Saturday night at Studio Current in Seattle you can catch a fantastic assemblage of experimental animations created by a lot of folks who reside in the pacific northwest plus others who live elsewhere.
Lori D is an artist and animator living in Portland, Oregon. Her beautiful work is part of our "Good for Nothing" exhibit that is opening tonight. The party starts at 7 and we can't wait for all of you to see it. Fellow artist, Dillon Froelich asked her a few questions:
Whether it’s painting, commercial illustrations, or animations, each piece you produce has such a visible sense of humor. Do you find creating work that makes people smile important when working on a new series?
A lot of the time when I'm working I'm just sort of playing and exploring ideas and letting the narratives unfold so I think maybe the humor comes from posing questions for myself in the image(s) when I'm working and then coming up with little visual punchlines for my own amusement. Hopefully the humor is legible by others too!
It is so exciting to see your world come to life through your animation projects. How do you like working on animation verses painting? Do you find zines being helpful in creating a storyboard for upcoming animations?
Thank you! Painting is so much more immediate so I enjoy it for that reason and also because I get to play with color a lot more. Animation takes a long time to bring to life usually so it is more of an ongoing commitment to an idea. But there's nothing quite like seeing your drawings come to life when you line them all up in a row. I use zines more as a way to work with text or to share specific information, or a collection of ideas. I like that you can put a handmade thing like a zine into a lot of hands and over a long period of time for a very low expense. Zines are also interesting to work with because they too are time based in a way; in that it offers a little experience for the reader that isn't over as fast as if they were just facing off with a painting. They can hold a zine in their hands and keep it until they are ready to put it into the hands of somebody else. That's a special quality about zines. They can have a long life and reach a lot of people.
Along with designing multiple skateboard graphics, you also write a monthly column in The Skateboard Mag. Where do you think your style fits within the skateboarding world?
I haven't been doing the column lately in The Skateboard Mag but I feel lucky to have been able to do that for SO LONG! Thanks so much to Kevin Wilkins at The Skateboard Mag for making that possible. I think my style fit(s) into the skateboarding world because I am and always will be a devotee of that community. Now that I skateboard less often than I'd like to, I feel like maybe I'm growing into an old lady a bit so now maybe it's time for the new voices to dominate: like your brother's and yours! The many hours and days and years I have spent rolling that little sled all over the earth will always define who I am. It gave me a different kind of awareness about people and landscapes. I hope to be healthy and able enough to keep skating for years to come.
There is always an overwhelming sense of culture, history and tradition in your paintings. Do you find yourself pulling inspiration from a specific nationality or is it mainly fictional?
I am very much inspired and informed by my own experience growing up in a rural town in California and the temporal cultural specificity woven into that experience. I often revisit archetypal characters of the places and times I have lived in. I am also in constant awe of folk art from around the world and the way people from a spectrum of cultures and climates represent their own regional characters, historical figures, and heroes.
Your use of patterns and outfits is very authentic. Is there a time period or fashion style you admire the most? Ever make your own textiles?
Hahaha! Wow, thank you! I have never been complimented on authenticity of the outfits I paint and animate before. I am kind of oblivious when it comes to fashion but I imagine somebody else could probably point out better than I could what time period or fashion style I am tending towards. I have become increasingly obsessed with cowboy boots and I also enjoy painting clothes with tassels and fringe. I grew up around a lot of farmers, cowboys and people with monster trucks, motorcycles and muscle cars so I imagine the kind of outfits those folks would strut around in make up a big section of my mental costume department. I the people in my work usually look very American and occasionally they are donning more Russian or Ukrainian styles. I have never made my own textiles per se... unless you count knitting? I am addicted to knitting. But I have never made any prints for fabrics or anything. I hope that one day I will get a chance to do that!
